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NIKOS MARKOU | Monumenta Naturalia

03.03.2012 - 26.04.2012

“05.01.2010”, 2010, Inkjet print on fine art paper, 120 X 163 cm, Ed. of 5+1 a.p.










The new photographic work of Nikos Markou extends the research developed by the artist in his previous shows. He highlights a broader natural reality which surpasses human agony, but without concealing it. The lens focuses the earth and the ants’ movement carrying food to their colony is just a detail. The close observation of the flock of starlings, which shades the sky, reveals all the details of their physical build.  

Beyond Markou’ s obvious fascination with the natural landscape, as his oeuvre of the last 20 years reveals, his works are being governed by a constant concern about human and society. His late body of work entitled “Topos” studied the notion of the “natural” and the “constructed”. Almost always, there is an artificial grid behind the appearances. However, these two ele-ments are never being distinguished. They mix in order to create the images of “objective re-ality” which are being shown in the exhibition.

Working on his photographs with an almost transparent way, Markou depicts places, which “make us suspicious” of the world surrounding us, without the use of theatrical, dramatic or surrealistic elements. He frames his themes in a direct way and with no unnecessary decora-tions, presenting the natural landscape in a monumental manner. Contrary to the perception which seeks in the nature’s depiction the human appropriation by extending to it the urban landscape, the photographer’s work approaches the eastern philosophies according to which the human does not dominate over natural reality, but he traverses it. Markou’s images do not aim to create a landscape of incomparable natural beauty and harmony, nor to cause the feel-ing of surprise in front of something naturally unexpected, but to the construction of a new to-tality, where the balance between the universal and the particular is being imprinted, as Sim-mel suggests, with the masterly emergence of the detail.

The artist’s aim is not the recognizability of the landscape but he is interested in the inner contemplation. Landscapes of harmony are being composed by elements of chaos and images of deceptive “totality”, are being overturned in their inside by the existence of diverse details, as in the image with the geese. The full moon in the middle of the monochromatic night sky seeks Geometry as basic rule for comprehend-ing the world.



Duration: March 3rd  –  April 24th, 2012

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